Haredi court places curse on upcoming Jerusalem Gay Pride parade

Haaretz 23:26 10/06/2007
By Yair Ettinger, Haaretz Correspondent
The ultra-Orthodox rabbinical court, Haredi Badatz, placed a "curse" Sunday on the participants in the upcoming Gay Pride parade scheduled to take place next week in Jerusalem. The court also cursed the police officers who will be maintaining order during the parade. Badatz rabbis plastered warning posters on Jerusalem city walls saying "All those involved in the matter, those of impure souls and those helping them and guarding them, they will feel in their souls a curse, a bad spirit will come over them and haunt them, they will never be cleansed of their sins, from the judgment of God, in their bodies, their souls and their finances."

The ultra-Orthodox leaders plan to stage a "large demonstration which will shake the foundations for the sake of Jerusalem's holiness." The demonstration will likely take place next week, but the warning posters disseminated Sunday afternoon are perceived by the ultra-Orthodox community as a green light to begin protests even sooner. The rabbis decided to try to bring about the cancellation of the parade through protest after their "diplomatic efforts" to negotiate the cancellation with the Jerusalem police failed. The leader of the Haredi community, Rabbi Izhak Tuvia Weiss told the police that he was opposed to mass demonstrations, and asked senior police officials to rescind the authorization it had given to the gay and lesbian community to hold its Gay Pride parade in the streets of Jerusalem. According to some Haredi officials, Rabbi Weiss was disappointed by the meeting he had last week at his home with the chief of the Jerusalem district police force, Major General Aharon Franco, who refused to cancel the parade. In the wake of his diplomatic failure, Rabbi Weiss agreed to join the more militant members of the community in supporting the mass demonstration against the parade.